Bones (A Collection Of Monsters) – Andrew Cull

Reviewed By Miranda Crites

Did You Forget About Me?

Read March 26, 2019

Star Rating (out of 5): 5*

Cam Miller returns to his hometown after the death of his estranged father. He and his sister, Kelly, go out to their original home, a home they had to leave one night in hopes of never returning, to clear out any personal belongings their father may have left behind with plans to sell the house.

Cam has letters his father wrote him over the years, but he never read them, yet he brings them with him.

Something happened here so long ago, something he can’t remember. As Cam returns to the farm, some of his memories, along with his sister’s help, begin to resurface. Maybe some memories are better left forgotten.

Cam and Kelly have to face the horror of what happened all those years ago again, but this time they can’t run away from the monster.

***

The feels:

I could feel the coldness of this story seeping into my bones. No amount of covers helped. I could almost feel the water and expected to see the pages of my book curling from the dampness as the rain pelted the windows.

Hope and Walker

Read March 27, 2019

Star Rating (out of 5): 5*

“We were both 10. But he was dead. And I sat drawing him.”

Em’s father is the owner of one of two funeral parlors in the small town of Hope. She’s ten years old, and living upstairs in the same building as the funeral parlor. She isn’t supposed to be downstairs, but she sneaks into the Chapel of Rest at night and begins drawing the bodies in the caskets.

As she draws the bodies, she talks to them. This goes on for quite some time, but one night the corpse talks back from his special-order, child-sized casket that’s still a bit big for him.

Em uses what the dead boy has said to try to find his killer.

“Being scared’s good,” Grandpa Walker had told me once. “Stops us from doing stupid things.” It hadn’t stopped me.”

Em’s bravery leads her to do something stupid all right.

Her father may be special-ordering another of those child-sized caskets that Hope had never needed before, until now.

The Trade

Read March 28, 2019

Star Rating (out of 5): 4.5*

“It began with the offerings.”

The heat is stifling and the furnace is broken. It keeps pumping hot air. Mum and Dad argue constantly. They’ve begun sleeping in separate rooms.

I’m sick, fevered, and they blame what I’ve seen on the illness.

Opening the windows doesn’t help the heat much. The monster, the thing that’s bringing in the dead, rotted animals with their guts trailing out behind them, might get inside if I don’t close the windows.

My clothes cling to my small body. Oh, the heat.

More dead animals. More stench from the monster stalking our house in the dark. It’s just outside. Ceaseless arguing from Mum and Dad. It’s beyond arguing now…

“What had been an offering at first was now a demand.”

Knock and You Will See Me

Read April 2, 2019

Star Rating (out of 5): 5*

Coming in at ninety pages, this is the longest story in the collection. It’s cold and rainy. Andrew Cull certainly has a way with words, making me feel the dampness and the chill in the air.

When Ellie was a child, she was dead for over nine minutes, and it caused her to become “sensitive,” meaning that she can see things that most others don’t see.

Ellie’s dad has moved in with her and her three boys, but it’s not long before he dies.

“We buried Dad in the winter. It wasn’t until the spring that we heard from him again.”

While Ellie is grieving the loss of her father, she also begins to believe she is losing her mind. Letters from her father begin showing up, and her “sensitivity” is back.

“Spring is like that friend who you love to see but who always arrives when your house is dirtiest”

She believes maybe they buried her dad alive…

There’s an “animal” stalking the family. The authorities believe it is a bear, but with her “sensitiveness,” Ellie knows differently.

“They say when something terrible is about to happen, when you’re about to die, everything seems to slow down. I don’t think that’s true. I think, when you’re pushed, you can think a lot faster than you mostly spend your days thinking.”

After months of hell, Ellie knows she must protect her boys and stand up and fight.

Star Rating (out of 5): 4.875*

Bones

‘Bones’ brings together four chilling ghost stories by award winning writer-director Andrew Cull. Four monsters collected in paperback for the first time.

You can buy Bones from Amazon UK & Amazon US

Miranda Crites

Miranda Crites is a reader, book reviewer, photographer, writer, and lover of horror. Miranda is from the ghostly woods of rural West Virginia, where she resides with her husband and two teenagers. They enjoy spending time together hiking, camping, and off the grid where they are building a cabin in the woods.

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